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Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Shadows of Damascus NBtM

Blurb:

Bullet
wounds, torture and oppression aren’t the only things that keep a man—or a
woman—from being whole.

Debt.
Honor. Pain. Solitude. These are things wounded war veteran Adam Wegener knows
all about. Love—now, that he is not good at. Not when love equals a closed
fist, burns, and suicide attempts. But Adam is one who keeps his word. He owes
the man who saved his life in Iraq. And he doesn’t question the measure of the
debt, even when it is in the form of an emotionally distant, beautiful woman.

Yasmeen
agreed to become the wife of an American veteran so she could flee persecution
in war-torn Syria. She counted on being in the United States for a short stay
until she could return home. There was one thing she did not count on: wanting
more.

Is it
too late for Adam and Yasmeen?

Shadows of Damascus to be
released by Soul Mate Publishing mid January, 2014.

Excerpt:

Hot cup
of coffee in one hand, phone receiver cradled on shoulder, Adam dialed the
phone number at eight thirty the following morning. A decent time. A woman’s
soft voice greeted him.

“Good
morning, ma’am. I’d like to talk to Mr. Pemssy?” He barely contained his
excitement.

“Sorry?”

“My
name is Adam Wegener,” he enunciated his words. “I want to speak to Mr. O. R.
Pemssy.”

“Wrong
number.”

Click.

“Damn
it.” His excitement disintegrated like a popped balloon. He went back to the
kitchen table and re-worked the letters again, only to end up with the same
number. Frustrated, he crumbled the papers and threw them across the kitchen
floor. To hell with this, he’d wasted enough time on this shit. If Fadi wanted
something from him, he damned well better call him.

Hungry
and angry, he stabbed a slice of toast and smeared it with peanut butter.
Tension building in the muscles of his arms, he wanted to throw or break
something. Instead, he swallowed the sandwich and went outside to work.
Climbing astride his rusty old tractor, he cranked the motor.

Rising
heat squeezed sweat from his body like a sponge with no regard to his fragile
mental state. His mind crunched numbers without end while he worked. Thoughts
of the cool fridge full of icy drinks beckoned him for an early lunch. He
abandoned his tractor in the middle of the field, and headed home, discarding
his wet shirt on the way. He walked around the kitchen, stomping papers. It
felt good and satisfying. As satisfying as the icy Coke he gulped down. Needing
to put things in order, he collected the discarded papers. When he reached to
crush the envelope, his eyes landed on the Turkish stamp. A surge of excitement
gripped his stomach. One more thing he needed to try.

Logging
onto his laptop, he searched Turkey’s city codes for area code 216. Istanbul on
the Asian side. He searched for the country code, then the time difference.
Eight hours ahead put it close to nine p.m. in Istanbul.

He
dialed the sequence of international code numbers and held his breath while the
same ringing tone played with his nerves.

“’Allo?”
A man’s voice greeted.

“May I
speak to Mr. Pemssy?”

“Yust a
minute.” The man spoke with an unmistakable heavy accent.

Adam
dropped in a chair and closed his eyes in anticipation.

“I see
you got my letter,” a deep voice said.

“You’re
the one who sent it? Who am I speaking to?” Eyes wide open now. Could it be
Fadi? Damn it, he couldn’t remember his voice.

“You
know who I am. I can’t use my real name. How is zat hib of yours? Giving you
trouble?”

Fadi.
Same annoying accent. “What the hell is going on?” He grit his teeth and tried
to ignore the mispronunciations. “Couldn’t you have given me your phone number
in the letter, or called me directly?”

“I
didn’t know if you still lived at that address, and I didn’t want my number to
fall in the wrong hands. You’re not listed. I knew you liked to count things.
That was the best I could come up with.”

“I too
tried to find you many times. What can I do for you, man? What do you need?”
Was there a better way to say he hadn’t forgotten Fadi?

“I need
a favor. But I can’t explain over the phone. Get on a plane and come here as
soon as possible.”

“You
want me to fly to Turkey? You serious?”

“You
promised to help if I needed anything, and I do. Desperately.”

Adam
coughed to steal a moment. What the hell? Fly over there? Could he even afford
it? He’d like to help the guy, but this was insane.

“Can’t
just drop everything and leave. I’ll do my best to help you from here if you
tell me what you need. Nothing illegal, you should know this upfront.”

“I
can’t tell you, and I can’t stay on the line for too long. A life is at stake.
Are you in or out?”

Adam
was torn. Torn and ashamed to admit he looked for a way out of the promise he’d
given years earlier. “Your life?”

Fadi
remained silent for a few seconds.

He
heard an agonized exhale.

“You’re
my only hope.”

Writing
Tips

Knowing
what the next scene or chapter is going to be is crucial to staying fluid with
the creative process. And it is so important to keep progressing in a writer’s
world. Too many writers I know started on a wonderful story idea, but never got
to finish their work, getting stuck on perfecting the scene at hand before
moving to the next. Let’s face it, no matter how many times writers read their
work, their critical eye will always find something wrong. Therefore, discipline
and perseverance are needed.

One way
to go about it is to map the work. Writing from a plot map gives structure to
the work, and to the writer. When a certain section proves stubborn to nail
down, the writer can move to another part of the plot, knowing what is needed
there, and then gets back to the wrinkled scene. More often than not, the
process helps unlock the problem, and the writer keeps going. I know a lot of
writers who work this way, and they are able to produce coherent well-connected
story lines one would never suspect they jumped between chapters and scenes
during the creative process.

With my
book Shadows of Damascus, I unknowingly used this method. The first thing I
wrote was a scene in chapter five, and I anchored all the other events in the
plot around that scene. Once I was satisfied I pinned it down the way I wanted,
I moved on to other parts in the story, maneuvering my way between the chapters
according to my mindset at the time while I worked. Suffice it to say, that is
not a very effective way to go about creating a structured, sequential work
like a book or a novel. For the kind of writer I am, and for the kind of story
I had, it worked.

Lilas
Taha is a writer at heart, an electrical engineer by training, and an advocate
for domestic abuse victims by choice. She was born in Kuwait to a Syrian mother
and a Palestinian father, and immigrated to the U.S. as a result of the Gulf
war in 1990. She earned a master’s degree in Human Factors Engineering from the
University of Wisconsin- Madison. There, Lilas met her beloved husband and true
friend, and moved with him to Sugar Land, Texas to establish a family. She is
the proud mother of a daughter and a son. Instead of working in an industrial
field, she applied herself to the field of social safety, working with victims
of domestic violence.

Pursuing
her true passion for creative writing, Lilas brings her professional interests,
and her Middle Eastern background together in her debut fictional novel,
Shadows of Damascus.